Wrong date on Jefferson’s letter to Col. Humphries

A reader pointed out we put the wrong date on Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Col. David Humphries in our article about George Washington’s views on the right to bear arms. We had “1889” as the year. The letter was dated 1789. We have altered the article accordingly, including a correction/update notice at the end and an update to our list of reference works.

We thank reader Kate Hayes for pointing out the mistake and for giving us the opportunity to model the transparent correction of errors. We explain what we did wrong and what we did to fix it.